Y: The Last Man is a 10-volume graphic novel collection about what would happen if an unexplained plague wiped out every male on earth, animals and human alike, in a heartbeat. The premise of this story is that two males were inexplicably spared: a young man named Yorick Brown, amateur escape artist and generally something of a loser, and a capuchin monkey. The primary plotline is concerned with how to keep Yorick alive long enough to figure out just why he survived and whether that information can be used to help repopulate the earth, all while Yorick tries to find his girlfriend and would-be fiance, who was on a sabbatical in the Australian Outback when the disaster struck.
In the process, Yorick and the people who help him encounter crazed "Amazons," who believe it is their duty to remove the last vestige of the male of the species from the planet, an out-of-control Israeli Defense Forces commander who wants Yorick for her own purposes, Yorick's mother, a Representative and one of the few members of the U.S. government left alive, Yorick's sister (with a few plot twists I won't reveal), and various others, some who try to aid him, many of whom try to kill him.
The science in this set of graphic novels frankly doesn't make much sense, so you have to turn your brain off, much as you have to do when you read Superman. Some of the depictions of life without men make sense; some less so. There are plot twists galore and *everyone* has secrets, some of which aren't revealed until the final volume.
I found the artwork in this series to be adequate but uninspiring. It reminded me a little of the old Curt Swan Superman and Legion of Super Heroes days. It's clean and uncluttered but this isn't artwork that's going to blow you away or that you'll want to show off to your friends. The real attraction to this series is the writing. To a certain extent, I think that's appropriate, as this doesn't have the grandeur and the scope of, say, the latest Avengers or Justice League space battle.
The fifth volume of the series has our hero finally making his way to California. He enters what appears to be an abandoned Catholic church, where despite his flippancy, it's easy to see that he's still very disturbed by what he had to do in the prior book. As it happens, the church isn't abandoned and, after a brief altercation, Yorick meets the church's sole resident, a former flight attendant named, coincidentally, Beth (the name of Yorick's girlfriend, whom he's been trying to figure out how to get to in Australia).
After exchanging stories about the guilt that each of them shares, they find themselves attracted to each other and, for the first time in the series, Yorick finally gets some, a rather surprising delay for that particular act given the nature of the story. There is brief nudity in this story, if that bothers you. The pair are attacked by three Amazons, who threaten to burn down the church. With Yorick's timely intervention, the three are driven off. In a cliffhanger, we finally see Yorick's girlfriend, Beth, in the Australian Outback, as she is about to be kidnapped by an aboriginal tribe.
In the next issue, we return to Yorick's sister Hero, and see much of her past history in a flashback, some of which explains her actions in the previous issues. She returns to her mother in Washington, D.C., and begs her help in finding Yorick. She eventually finds her way to the location of the astronaut's crash in Kansas, where she meets up with the Russian agent, Natalya, and the astronaut, who has now had her (male) baby, so Yorick is no longer the only man on earth.
Meanwhile, Yorick and company are having a little fun in San Francisco and we get a brief look at the Ninja assassin, Toyota. The real antagonists, though, are a rogue group of agents, former colleagues of Agent 355, who are after a mysterious amulet that Agent 355 picked up from its former owner in the Middle East, who was assassinated just as Agent 355 found her. They believe that the amulet was the cause of the plague that killed all of the men and they want it destroyed so that the men cannot ever return.
Instead, they settle for the ring that Yorick picked up at a magic shop, that was to be his fiance's wedding ring. Yorick has been speculating that it's the ring that kept him safe from the plague. This seems to be borne out by the fact that Yorick becomes deathly ill when they return to Dr. Mann's apartment.
In the confrontation between Agent 355 and the rogue agents, Yorick's sister shows up, finally having tracked him down. In the confrontation, Hero and Agent 355 team up, before heading back to the lab, where they find ... well, you'll have to read the book to find out.
In the final chapter of the book, the Ninja assassin who has been dogging them finally makes her move, stealing Ampersand from the lab. After a fight on the bridge, the assassin escapes, having injured Agent 355 in the process. They track her down, only to find that she's just taken ship for Japan, to a small port city, where Dr. Mann's mother lives.
As with the prior book, the writing in this volume is superb, with numerous plot lines tangling and untangling, with twists both surprising and predictable. Vaughan is juggling a surprising number of characters and plot lines and somehow manages to make it look easy. There are a couple of (forgivable) coincidences, of course, but the real joy is being with characters we have grown to care for, whose fate we are genuinely concerned about. We leave this book wanting to know more and still not sure just where this is going to end up, but knowing that we're in for one heck of a ride.
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Top reviews from other countries
J. Fennessy
A great series by a great writer
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2013Daniel Ramsden
Middle, back story & resolutions
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2013